Personality tests and other behavioral profiles have invaded management, in particular human resources. Proposed as decision -making crutches, especially during recruitments, MBTI, Disc and other enneagrams are gadgets based on any solid foundation, and are, moreover, ineffective. You have to get rid of it as soon as possible. Because all Meta-studies Confirm, these tests appear to the rank of the lowest performance predictors among the tools mobilized in a recruitment process. Not only are the theoretical models that underlie them (CG Jung for the MBTI and Marston for Disc), even delusional (Gurdjieff and its esotericism for the Enneagram), but not being seriously calibrated, they do not say to almost nothing serious about the person who undergoes them. Decontextualized, they are based on well -known cognitive biases, including the Barnum effect.
Their defenders argue that they are only one element among others in decision -making and that they are used above all to “start a discussion” with a candidate. If this is the objective, why not resort in this case to astrology, to “oomancy” (divination by egg white) or to read the coffee grounds? Not sure that we would get less good results …
As Marie-Sophie Zambeaux explains in detail in her latest book (Recruitment under influence. Free yourself from cognitive biases, Dunod, 2025), recruitment is already sufficiently under the influence of cognitive biases so as not to have to inflict a decision -making rattle which has only one effect: to produce a nice noise when it is agitated in the Office of a manager. Eradicating these tests and profiles of our organizations is not only a barrier gest bullshit managerial, but it also helps to protect us against an already very present danger and much more serious still: the invasion of Artificial intelligence in recruitment processes.
Mbti, disc, enneagram and ia: same fight!
The analysis by the AI of CVs and motivation letters in order to detect the keywords and to operate a first sorting is a practice already well rooted in our organizations. The next step, which consists in using video tools and sound (Hirevue, Pymetrics, Modernhire etc.) for supposedly revealing the “real personality” of a candidate is already underway. That these gadgets offer neither insurance nor reliability does not prevent the fact that their use is always wider. However, this must alert us and push us to demand the pure and simple ban on these practices in recruitment.
For what ? First of all because they reconnect with pseudoscientific practices of another age such as physiognomonia, and rely on toe to say the least, as the analysis of non -verbal communication, far from being a “science” established. Then, because there is no need to be a big clerk to understand the potentially discriminatory nature of these practices.
The tests and profiles Personality and behavior share with the AI of disturbing similarities: an essentialist vision of individuals, a strong belief in theories and models which are more like pseudoscience than to serious disciplines, as well as A blind faith in technology to solve problems and facilitate decision -making. Faith that borders on solutionism and encloses us in a form of foolishness, forgetting that recruitment is a game of actors where everyone simulates and sells.
Our appetite for these tests is nothing other than a voluntary servitude. She prepares us for the subjugation that artificial intelligence promises us. Banking the use of behavioral and personality tests and profiles is also refusing our progressive enslavement to AI. Mbti, disc, enneagram and ia: same fight!
* Christophe Genoud is a temporary worker at the Haute Ecole de Gestion in Geneva (HEG) and the Haute Ecole Specialized in Western Switzerland (HES-SO) in Lausanne, specialist in organization and author of the book “Leadership, Agility, Happiness at work : Bullshit! ” (Editions Vuibert).
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